Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-06-23 (Monday)

On 6/24/2025 8:12 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
 

Child's Play (4K disc) 2019 remake that swaps out a cursed doll voiced
by Brad Dourif for a doll with AI voiced by Mark Hamill.  The AI bonds
with a little boy then goes on a killing spree.  This was not good.  It
was mostly background noise with the director's commentary.  I could
tell from the commentary the director had no idea what he was doing.  At
one point on the commentary he even said he didn't know why the doll was
doing what it was doing, but it was in the script.

 The scriptwriter wasn't taking calls? If more dialog was needed to
explain motivation, then he should have demanded revision or written it
himself like many directors would do.

I know!
Remind me again who is supposed to

be in charge between the director and the writer.
 

Last I heard it was the director.  But this guy was in over his head. I'm not sure when he recorded the commentary, but at one point he mentioned being surprised at the backlash for replacing Dourif with Hamill.  In what universe is that going to be a surprise?

The Studio (AppleTV+)  I started watching this recently and made it
through the first 4 episodes.  The series stars Seth Rogen as the new
promoted head of a film studio and follows his wacky adventures behind
the scenes.  The series is full of celebrity cameos.  It's sort of like
"The Player" or maybe that old Fox show, "Action."

 Action was terrific. The satire was wicked. The writer jokes were
hysterical. They hired the wrong writer because they forgot the name of
the guy they really wanted. The prostitute gave him, uh, special
motivation to produce the final draft of the script. They wouldn't pay
him the overtime he was entitled to, so they made him a producer. Then,
that joke was paid off: He yelled at a crew member on set, who
subsequently died. The executive producer congratulated him on becoming
a real producer, having killed his first crew member.
 Is The Studio funny or not? You didn't say. I still have trouble
picturing Rogan as the executive.

The first episode was pretty funny.  Rogan desperately wants to be a snooty film maker, but the studio just wants him to crank out popcorn flicks.  His first assignment after the promotion is to make a "Kool-Aid" movie.  But Rogan has the opportunity to make a movie with Martin Scorsese, and needs to figure out how to turn an arthouse Scorsese film, into a marketable Kool-Aid man movie.  The series went downhill from there.  It was like each subsequent episode was half as good as the one before it.  How is that even possible?!?  I do plan on eventually finishing the series.